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Pacific Oil Essay

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Pacific Oil Case Assessment Negotiating is the art of managing power. "A negotiator’s power may be critical for the quality of his or her success…" (Kim, Pinkley, & Fragale, 2005, p. 799). There are various sources of power as well as various way to control power and its impact in negotiations. In the case of Pacific Oil's negation with its long time Reliant customer, power was significantly unbalanced to the disadvantage of Pacific Oil and its negotiators. This resulted in Pacific Oil making numerous concessions to the advantage of Reliant. However, there were many actions which Pacific Oil could have taken to balance the playing field in their negotiations, but would have required strategic planning far in advance. Pacific Oil failed …show more content…

They represent Pacific Oil in one location, while decision impacting their negotiations are being made in another location, such as the decision to manufacture, or not manufacture, PVC. Fontaine and Gaudin might have engage in some of the decision making processes taking place within Pacific Oil. Another disadvantage for Fontaine and Gaudin was their negotiating locations. Their concern for time prevented them from setting up negotiations where they may have gained some power from perception in their own corporate environment. There were a number of ways for Pacific Oil to address the issue of their power imbalance with …show more content…

In other words, Reliant was a major customer. Perhaps if Pacific Oil focused on increasing their smaller business relationships would prevent them from large losses in negotiating. Then, Pacific Oil's decision to not proceed with manufacturing their own PVC might not have been a very good decision. If the decision was made because it was determine not to be lucrative, maybe all avenues were not addressed, such as outsourcing. This could have given Pacific Oil the power of competition. If they would have proceeded with the manufacturing venture, they would be less dependent on Reliant as a customer. The power advantage would then shift from Reliant to Pacific Oil. Pacific Oil could also approach the various competition to get an advantage over Reliant's threat to take their business somewhere else. Pacific Oil also could have gained some advantage by encouraging Reliant to address all of their issues up front by asking more questions about their concerns (Lewicki, Saunders & Barry, 2011). Finally, conducting all of the negotiations away from Pacific Oil's main office diminished some of their power. Having some higher leadership more engaged in the negotiating process could have diminished some of Reliant's power advantage through perception. Reliant was in a position to demand more

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